I am new to Arduino but not electronics and I expected problems with the starter kit.One problem I encountered is the pot supplied with the kit. It's marked as 10k but in reality is 50k as measured by a multimeter. Couldn't figure out why the LCD "hello world" project wouldn't work. In fact it was working but the LCD backlight was too dim to see.

Wow... that's a pretty big one to screw up. You could put a 10K resistor in parallel with the pot and that would make the total resistance always less than 10K. But, yes, it should have came with the proper pot.

3) The reason the potentiometer base doesn't fit well is because of the pin shapes. They're metal strips that measure 1.05mm wide and .29mm thick at the breadboard end, but this thin shaft is only 3.9mm long at which point the width broadens to 1.98mm. I do not have a tool to measure the breadboard holes; that wider shaft doesn't fit in the hole but the length of thin shaft isn't long enough to make contact unless you push it down hard.

Presumably I need to solder header pins onto the ends to make it work as intended. I don't have the first clue about soldering, anyone throw me a bone?

You can actually fix it very easy without soldering. The reason the potentiometer doesn't fit well is that the holes in the breadboard are actually not round, but slits. The slits are horizontal, whereas the male pins of the potentiometer are vertical. If you take a small plier and carefully rotate the thinner bottom half of the potentiometer pins by 45° they will fit nicely. I just came across this while doing Project 05 of the starter kit. Honestly, I think these minor misalignments are part of the beauty of the kit, it's you are working with off the shelf components, not with something 100% pre-baked for you.

I agree, and what's more is that actually hacking it is poor engineering, and especially if the right way is readily available.I think a desperate enough situation combined with that knowledge of how it looks, and feels having been done right, that anyone will find a way.

For what it's worth, thanks to nass, this was annoying me as well. Yes, sure, one could hack your way around it and be all kumbayah about it - and I mean, I have all the sympathy in the world for Arduino, don't get me wrong - but it's really just unnecessarily irritating. Again, FWIW, just one (more) guy here, but I think getting these details right - especially for a starter kit where the user is still building up understanding and might not have the problem-solving skills to play around with - should be a priority and not something to just gloss over.

Yeah I got some components that did not fit either. I will take a pair of pliers and twist the pot. I also tried to do the temperature project but I couldn't find the correct component? I also broke the rgb led. :< So I skipped two projects. I ordered a batch of 50 rgb led's for $3.61 so I won't have that problem again.

I heard Radio shack sold component parts so I'll take my breadboard up and look for a pot and maybe a bigger breadboard. male header pins and one of those multimeters.

You actually have to resize these yourself. I got a strong pair of pliers with an end good for grabbing and took the plastic part of the headers and pushed the pins until the size was appropriate. It took a bit of work but I eventually found a size that fit the servo on one end and the breadboard on the other perfectly. Your solution is fine too though. Whatever works

Ive had the same issue and solved it the same way. The pins are not "glued" in the plastic part, they are just pushed through it. It might feel hard to pull 3 or 5 together, but one by one its easy with a pliers. Pull out all of them, one by one, then push them in, one by one. Putting the plastic right in the middle (so either side is equal in length) worked for me. Do not use your fingers.

You can actually fix it very easy without soldering. The reason the potentiometer doesn't fit well is that the holes in the breadboard are actually not round, but slits. The slits are horizontal, whereas the male pins of the potentiometer are vertical. If you take a small plier and carefully rotate the thinner bottom half of the potentiometer pins by 45° they will fit nicely. I just came across this while doing Project 05 of the starter kit. Honestly, I think these minor misalignments are part of the beauty of the kit, it's you are working with off the shelf components, not with something 100% pre-baked for you.

Wow, thank you, all the three pots provided by the kit sit snugly in the breadboard now.I noticed that it is because of the orientation because if I plug it in the other way it fits well. But I never thought about twisting the pins.

P.S. I twisted the top by 45 degrees and the bottom by 90 degrees to make it completely parallel to the slit. 45-degree turn at the bottom still causes the pots to pop.

For the header pins I simply slid the plastic part with hand, with the pins against a table.